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From a courthouse fire and the nastiest local political race I can recall in my life (the state Senate 16 seat), to hard times, lost jobs and $4 a gallon gas, no one can deny that we had our share of serious issues to deal with in 2008.

Between the roar of locomotives and boxcars coming and going down the tracks starting and stopping, to the railroad’s restoration workers grinding and welding on luxury train cars, it can be downright deafening.

“It better be noisy,” said Bob Willetts, the former Hartsville arts teacher who now manages L&C passenger car shop. “If it’s not loud, nothing is going on and we’re in trouble.”

On Dec. 7, 1941, a young Lancaster man – U.S. Army Sgt. Paul D. Robertson – found himself in the center of America’s entry into the World War II.

Robertson, an electrician in the 259th Quarter Master Corps of the 7th Bomber Command, was stationed at Hickam Field on the island of Oahu in Hawaii when the war broke out. Hickam is adjacent to Pearl Harbor.

That day, Robertson received a near-fatal chest wound from flying shrapnel when the Imperial Japanese Air Force started its ugly Sunday morning bombing.

Most homeowners add a few features to personalize their yards and make them just a little different. Count Robert and Glenda Mungo among them.

So much so that their yard at 1651 Craig Farm Road caught the eye of Penny Bailey. Bailey represents the Green Gardeners on the Lancaster Council of Garden Clubs selection committee, which chooses the Yard of the Month.

The committee chose the Mungos’ yard as Yard of the Month for November.

Just before the start of every University of South Carolina home football game, Jessica Bradburn gets caught up in moment as the strains of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (the theme to “2001: A Space Odyssey”) roar over the public address amid 80,000-plus screaming fans.

She has one of the best vantage points in Williams Brice Stadium, to see up close what’s been called one of the most electric entrances in college sports.

There’s a tradition at Yosemite National Park in California where a woodpile is set on fire and slowly pushed off a cliff, forming a burning cascade as it falls.

That image proved to be the inspiration that gave Firefall its name.

Formed in 1974 in Boulder, Colo., Firefall , with its string of top Country rock hits from two decades, is coming to the University of South Carolina at Lancaster’s Bundy Auditorium stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Crowds of residents packed Main Street in downtown Lancaster on Saturday for the annual Veterans Day Parade. American flags waved in the wind along the street as cars full of those who served in every branch of U.S. Armed Services drove past the crowd.

Posted on the cars were the names of the veterans inside, as well as which branch of the military they served in and in which wars they fought.

There were veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, as well as several former prisoners of war.

When 100 of South Carolina’s World War II veterans fly to Washington, D.C., on Nov. 15 to tour the monument placed there in their honor, two Lancaster men will be among them. John Maltese, 86, of Indian Land and L.J. Vincent, 92, of Kershaw were selected for the very first Honor Flight South Carolina. They will visit several landmarks, including the National World War II Memorial in the nation’s capital. The purpose of the nonprofit Honor Flight South Carolina is to fly veterans like Maltese and Vincent to and from the memorial free of charge.

Dr. Renee Bohn never considered the cards, letters and care packages she constantly sent to Sgt. Lavern Patterson in Iraq to be that big a deal. After all, Bohn said Patterson, who worked at Lancaster One Medical as a medical specialist, was part of her extended family. “I was just supporting my girl,” Bohn said. But when Patterson, a Kershaw native with the S.C.